


it’s nice to have a friend

by strawberryfire



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Billy is a good brother, Completely Ignoring Canon, F/F, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Ignoring Canon, LETS GO LESBIANS, Marriage, Moving In Together, Sleepovers, Song based fic, el goes to school, elmax - Freeform, gays only event, maxel, mentions of harringrove, stranger things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 13:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20546726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberryfire/pseuds/strawberryfire
Summary: wholesome fluff based off of the song for the lesbians, It’s Nice to Have a Friend by Taylor Swift :)





	it’s nice to have a friend

_school bell rings, walk me home_

December in Hawkins this year was so unusually cold. Max Mayfield, the new girl from California, wasn’t used to the constant snowfall and the way the wind made your face sting.

“Max, how are you not freezing to death?” Her best friend and she guesses kind of boyfriend Lucas asks.

“Dunno. At least Billy gave me his gloves.”

“I would have given you mine had you asked.” Lucas huffs.

Billy wasn’t the nicest person in the world and Max’s group of friends could never quite understand why she thought so highly of him, like she couldn’t bring herself to tell them what happened behind closed doors.

The bell rings and they walk to their first period, which luckily they all shared the same schedule since it was such a small school.

Sitting in her boring history class, the quiet brown eyed girl that Max had become halfway friends with passes Max a note.

“Wanna hang out after school?” is what it says, written in pretty cursive.

Max didn’t really know this girl too well, other than her name was El and she was the police chief’s daughter.

“Yeah, sounds like fun.” Max writes down in her not so pretty writing then she passes the note back.

El smiles at Max and she felt her face, which was still cold from the biting wind, warm up in a way that wasn’t blushing or just adjusting to the temperature inside. The warmth came up from butterflies in her stomach.

Max ignores the way the heat on her cheeks feels like an overwhelming sense of happiness and watches the snow gently fall outside, covering the sidewalk chalk and basketballs left outside. She thinks it's the most beautiful thing she has ever seen, because you don’t see snow in December in California. Sure, the ocean gets a little colder and maybe it’ll even get down to 72 degrees. The nights are always cold, though, even in the summer.

The day drags on like the west coast mugginess and every time Max thinks of the brown haired girl, her pretty smile shining like the sun and sparkling like the water on the sand, the feeling on her cheeks comes back. Max does her best to ignore it.

As Max walks to her locker after her last class, she reaches into her jacket pockets to get her gloves.

“Oh rats!” She huffs, holding only one.

“What’s wrong?” Mike asks as he walks up with the other three boys.

“I lost my other glove. Billy’s gonna be pissed.”

“Here.” Max hears a soft and gentle voice say. She turns around and El is standing there, holding out one of her own gloves.

“Borrow mine until we find yours.” She smiles again.

Max feels like she’s getting a heat stroke.

“Thanks.” Max takes it and puts it on her other hand.

“Wanna go to your place or mine?” El’s hair is so soft, messy but pretty curls falling in front of her face. She looks cozy, like a mug of hot coco wrapped up in a person.

“Mine is only a ten minute walk, if that’s okay with you.”

El nods and the two girls walk to Max’s house. El has her bare hand in the pocket of her coat and Max thinks about offering out her hand to El’s.

So she does.

El smiles again, her eyes sparkling. She takes Max’s hand, the touch almost like when you come in from the cold and take a warm bath. It stings like hell but in a good way.

They walk into Max’s house; it’s small and honestly it didn’t feel like a home to Max, but El found it nice.

Billy was standing in the kitchen, “Hey, little shit. Who’s this?”

“Hi, I’m El. El Hopper.”

“Nice to meet you.” He takes a drag of his cigarette.

Max hangs up her coat right next to El’s. The snowflakes are still in Max’s fire red hair and El looks at each one, committing to memory how pretty they looked. How pretty Max was and even though El had never been to California, she didn’t need to because San Diego and the sandy beaches were right here in front of her.

“You like video games at all? I finally got my Nintendo.” The nerdy grin Max gets across her face makes El smile too. She had never smiled so much and she barely knew this girl.

“Never played any, but I’d love to learn.”

“Rad!” Max giggles and turns on her TV, hooking up the controllers, “So, I only have Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. If you ask Mike, he’ll say Mario is better, but I think Zelda is. It’s much prettier. Dustin only likes arcade games and he’s determined to beat me in Galaga. I have the highest score at the arcade and I always beat Will in Duck Hunt.”

El just nods and listens, cause she has no idea what the redhead from California is talking about. She’ll just pretend she does, cause Max is such a nerd. The cutest nerd, though.

They entire evening was spent playing Zelda, talking about all latest trends in all the Tiger Beat magazines Max had, and painting each other’s nails.

Billy had ordered them pizza and after watching him nearly killing Steve with a dinner plate, Billy seemed oddly very calm and nice. He offered to help them set up a tent in the living room and start a fire in the fireplace, since it was too cold to do it outside.

Max explained that Billy did this for her all the time in the winter and she always just sat in the tent alone reading books and drawing.

“I’m still not used to how cold it gets.” Max says as she sips her coco, with exactly six marshmallows. Billy said she has to have six, and El takes note of that.

“Yeah, it gets worse in February.” El giggles, drinking her own coco. Max notices that El waits a few minutes for when it’s just right; not too hot and not too cold.

“Ugh, boring.” Max huffs.

The soft sparks of the fire, the snow falling ever so gently outside and the calmness on Cherry Lane brings such happiness into El’s heart it almost makes her tear up. She’s watching Max read a book; Pet Cemetery by Stephen King to be exact. Billy scolded Max, saying she shouldn’t be reading such a scary and ‘grown up’ book. Max just responded with she could do what she wanted.

Christmas music starts playing on the TV and Max hums along, flipping the page in the book she is very invested in.

But El didn’t mind. She loved just watching her, when her pretty red hair fell in front of her face and she would tuck it behind her ear, then get frustrated when it fell again. El watched Max’s crystal eyes dart across the pages, reading every word then excitedly turning the page to see what came next. She looked so peaceful and when they both fell asleep, side by side in the living room tent, El felt that same peace. The quiet and the calm that she had been searching for her whole life.

_sun sinks down, no curfew_

First day of sophomore year and Max was already stressed out of her mind.

Billy had left for California a few weeks before, taking Steve and Robin with him. Nancy and Jonathan had moved away to Seattle. That meant that the party didn’t really have anyone to go to besides Hopper and Joyce.

El noticed as soon as Billy left that Max wasn’t herself. She was even more quiet and more sarcastic whenever Lucas or Mike said something stupid.

After a very long and boring day full of too many syllabuses, El meets Max at the bike rack.

“Hey, wanna sleep over? Order pizza and talk about how shitty this place is?” El asks.

Max smiles, but it’s weak, “I’d love that. But I’ll have to go tell my mom, if that’s alright.”

El nods, “See you soon, Maxie.”

Hopper rides up in the cop car and she gets in, waving as he drives away.

“Yo Max! Wanna go to the arcade?” Lucas calls as he walks up with other three boys.

“No, thanks. I’m hanging out with El tonight. Tomorrow?”

Mike huffs, “Oh c’mon. We’ve barely seen you.”

“Yeah, ‘cause God forbid I was spending time with my brother before he moved halfway across the fucking country.” Max’s voice cracks a little as she gets on her bike and rides home.

And when Max walks into El’s house, the pizza already on the table, she doesn’t tell El she had just cried for thirty minutes. Hopper puts on Dirty Dancing and says that they could go skate around outside as long as they didn’t go far.

And as El is laughing about the popular girl Courtney, Max just listens. Max doesn’t talk about how much she misses Billy but is too scared to call him because she’s too afraid he doesn’t miss her at all.

They finish the pizza and the movie, El saying that Footloose is better. Max says she likes Grease more, because of John Travolta when secretly she thinks he’s hideous and that the girl who plays Sandy is much prettier. (Max would never talk about the poster she had of Olivia Newton John in her closet.)

“Wanna go sit up on the roof? Watch the sunset?” El asks.

Max shrugs, “Sure why not.”

The summer nights hadn’t left quite yet and the lightning bugs still flew about as the two girls sat, watching the sun tuck itself behind the trees. The air was sticky but the cool breeze made it a little better.

“I’m so bored. Let’s do 20 questions, I go first. How have you been?” El says, pulling up her hair into a ponytail, looking out at the sky painted with pastel pinks.

Max sighs and there’s a few beats, “Stressed out.”

“Yeah, me too.” El puts her hands in her lap and she wishes she had the courage to just pull Max into her arms, to promise her everything was gonna be okay.

The two hadn’t spent much time together over the summer, since Max had been off with Billy doing all sorts of fun things like zip lining, staying at Steve’s old lake house, exploring Chicago and Detroit. El had gone with her Girl Scout troop to a sleep-away camp that had lasted the entire month of June. She loved it and made so many new friends but none of them made her happy like Max did.

After a few minutes of quiet between the girls, the sounds of summer loud in their ears, Max puts her hand on top of El’s.

“Billy was gonna take me with him, y’know. He didn’t mind. And I almost said yes, but then i remembered you. I thought it would be a hard decision, choosing between you or Billy. Hawkins or San Diego. This bland, stupid, and boring town or back to the beach, back to the west coast. But it wasn’t hard. I chose Hawkins because that meant I chose you.”

El doesn’t know what to say because she’s so focused on Max’s gentle hand on top of her own, the fiery sunset matching the shades of her fiery hair. Max’s soft smile, the way she was so sure of her words.

“I’m glad you did that, Maxie.” El finally says even though it feels like her throat is closing up and she thinks it’s because of the lump of tears that’s forming.

“Last thing I said to Billy was that I needed advice because I thought I loved someone. He told me that love isn’t something I should know cause I’m too young or whatever. I think he said that cause he doesn’t believe in high school sweethearts. Y’know, like relationships are bullshit or whatever.”

El laughs lightly, “Isn’t that hypocritical though? I was there when he told Steve he loved him.”

“Exactly.” Max giggles, “But anyway. He said that I should tell them, even if it’s a friend. Cause it’s really nice to have a friend, even nicer to love that friend and have them love you too.”

Max intertwines her fingers with El’s, then scoots right next to her and puts her head on El’s shoulder.

“I’m not really sure if I’m supposed to think of love as what is is in the movies or what my heart tells me…I haven’t a clue what love is. But I think, I really do think that I love you, El Hopper. More than a friend kinda love.”

El feels every single ounce of breath get ripped out of her chest and it hurts so good.

“I don’t know what love is either, Max Mayfield. But I think i love you too.” El says, her voice so soft she’s afraid the cicadas will drown her out.

But Max does hear her and she squeezes El’s hand.

They sit up on the roof, watching the sunset and all it’s beautiful colors in a boring town that wasn’t so boring anymore because they had each other. Max still misses California and the beach and her brother.

She thinks about the first bitter winter and the first white Christmas she had in Hawkins, with El by her side. Six marshmallows in her coco, the warmth of Max’s cheeks when she saw El’s pretty smile, the touch of her hand as they walked to Cherry Lane on that December day. El thinks about the way Max loved books and that she didn’t like winter at all but she liked it better with El.

“I have your back every single day, Maxie. I hope you know that.” El says, her voice still soft.

“Mhm.” Max yawns a little, “I have yours, too. Forever.”

Max missed California and she missed the rush that you got whenever she caught a wave or landed a perfect kick flip at the skate park. She missed Billy, a lot. Even if he was a dick.

Thinking of her idiot brother made her think of that winter.

“Did we ever find Billy’s other glove?” Max asks.

El laughs, “You know what, no. No I don’t think we ever did.”

Max cracks up and they’re both laughing so hard they can’t breathe. It wasn’t even that funny, it really wasn’t.

And when Max gets to California with El right by her side, the church bells ringing, the rice on the ground looking like the snow on that day in December, she feels her cheeks heat up in a way that isn’t blushing or getting used to the warmness of their ranch house on Semillon Boulevard. She lays in bed, El asleep on her shoulder. She thinks about the bite of the Indiana winter wind and if she misses it.

But Semillon Boulevard in San Diego feels like home. And she could stay in this bed forever, if it meant the warmness would stay.

Max looks down at El and the ring on her finger. The way her mouth is a soft smile and her eyelashes are fluttering while she dreams.

And she thinks to herself that it really, truly, really is nice to have a friend.


End file.
